1. Coalition agreements are an integral part of the Israeli governmental structure and electoral system.

2. Such agreements are drawn up by persons holding public office who are elected by the public, and are therefore trustees of the public interest. Such position of trust, as well as a general duty to act in a fair manner, require them to make a full public disclosure of information at their disposal.

3. The democratic process requires ongoing communication between electors and elected, which is not confined merely to election times and for this to be effective, the public as well as each individual voter, have right of access to full information to enable them to make the appropriate choice when elections take place. Hence the necessity for full disclosure of coalition agreements.

4. Knesset members also have the same right of access to information as to the content of coalition agreements, so as to enable them to exercise their choice where a new government is presented before the Knesset for a vote of confidence.

5. Disclosure of coalition agreements is also required in the interest of effective public scrutiny of their contents, thus ensuring their conformity with the law and enhancing public confidence in government administration.

6. The duty to disclose coalition agreements is not an absolute one. Other interests, as for example those relating to security or foreign relations, or the need at times for political negotiations to be held away from the full glare of publicity may, in certain cases, require non-disclosure.

7. The same principles apply to disclosure of agreements concluded between opposition factions, as to these concluded between coalition partners.

8. On principle, there is nothing to prevent the Court from laying down specific rules with regard to disclosure of coalition agreements, to be derived from basic constitutional principles. The Court would thereby act in a creative, rather than an interpretative capacity, in the common law tradition, which has also been adopted by the Israeli legal system, especially in the field of administrative law.

9. Nevertheless, the Court recommended that the whole field of political agreements be the subject of appropriate legislation by the Knesset, which should regulate, inter alia, the scrutiny of the contents of such agreements and details relating to their disclosure, these being matters which cannot be effectively dealt with by the courts. The Court therefore confined itself to laying down the general principle that political agreements must be disclosed, and the broad rules relating thereto, such as the timing of thereof, i.e. no later than presentation of the Government before the Knesset.

10. The Court also dismissed the argument that section 15 of the Basic Law: The Government refers explicitly only to publication of the Government's political platform and therefore, ex silentio, coalition agreements do not require publication. The positive requirement to disclose such agreements should be derived from basic constitutional principles, as explained above.

This decision contains the first unequivocal pronouncement of the citizen's fundamental right to receive information from the Israeli government. It also emphasised the right of MPs to know the contents of agreements entered into by other Knesset factions. Two principles are important to note in this decision:

1) That all agreements made under public law are open to disclosure unless some other public interests such as security and foreign relations are better served by non-disclosure. This principle implies that agreements such as public-private partnerships entered into by our own governments for the purpose of developmental activities must be in the public domain. Our public authorities have been most reluctant to make such agreements public.

2) Members of Parliament and Legislators being public functionaries have a duty to be transparent about the information they hold or create as they hold positions of trust. Barak. J, observed: "A private person who has information may keep it to himself, and is under no obligation to disclose it save if the demands of good faith require him to do so [by virtue of section 39 of the Contracts (General Part) Law, 1973]. This does not apply to a public personality. Information in this possession is not his private "property". It is "property" which belongs to the public, and he must bring it to the notice of the public."